Advantages of pot seedling transplanting are as follows: (1) growth periods of vegetables can be shortened, crop arrangement is facilitated and land utilization is improved; (2) the root system of pot seedling will grow well after the seedlings are planted in the soil, which can provide convenient conditions for follow-up management. Since there is no suitable supporting machinery, the production of vegetables and flowers have been labor intensive industries for a long time. It relies on manual transplanting with high labor intensity, low work efficiency and low transplanting quality, besides, it is difficult to work on large area of land for farmers. Labor cost accounts for over 50% of the total production cost and farmers have to produce in small-scale land with low production efficiency, which restricts the development of vegetable and flower planting industry. Mechanized transplanting can reduce labor intensity, improve work efficiency and the survival pot seedling rate, and it can also improve economic returns and social benefits compared with the traditional manual-transplanting. It is becoming increasing popular with vegetable and flower producers.
The purpose of the pot seedling feeding mechanism is to deliver a pot seedling into a planter real-time. But, the rotary holding cup structure of existing semi-automatic transplanters is usually used for the seedlings feeding system, only one pot seedling can be fed at a time, and the operations cannot be discontinuous. The labor intensity is relatively high and the operators will become tired easily. As a result the seedling is missed and the transplant quality goes down, so the transplanting speed is relatively slow.
A fully-automatic transplanter has an automatic seedling feeding system and a high transplanting speed, which does not require manual seedling feeding. However, the fully-automatic transplanter has a relatively complex mechanism system and a very high cost. It is not suitable for medium-scale and small-scale users.
China Patent Application No. 201210317407.8 discloses an automatic seedling picking and feeding mechanism for plug seedling transplanter, an automatic seedling picking and feeding mechanism for plug seedling transplanter. The transplanter includes a displacement mechanism, a support stand, a slide rod, a connecting-rod mechanism, and a seedling clamping mechanism. The support stand can be installed on the displacement mechanism so as to implement position switching of the support stand between a seedling picking action and a seedling feeding action. One end of the slide rod can be inserted in a slide sleeve movable inside a slide groove on the support stand, and the other end of the slide rod can be connected to the seedling clamping mechanism. The displacement mechanism can be used to implement switching of the seedling clamping mechanism between a seedling picking procedure position and a seedling feeding procedure position. The connecting-rod mechanism can be used to control the rotation of the slide rod and the seedling clamping mechanism and implement closing and opening of a seedling clamp. The apparatus has a relatively complex structure and a relatively high production cost, and the seedling clamping mechanism of the apparatus cannot precisely position a pot seedling in a seedling clamping process, which results in the loss of seedlings.
China patent application No. 2011101335051 discloses a mechanical seedling feeding transplanter, a mechanical seedling feeding mechanism which can replace manual operation. Multiple pot seedlings can be placed into a mechanical seedling feeding system each time, with the control of electric-control system, the seedling feeding mechanism can drop seedlings automatically by using delivery cups. Thereby this mechanism improves the speed and efficiency of transplanting work, meanwhile the production cost was reduced. However, the seedling feeding mechanism has a complex design and a relatively large quantity of parts. In addition, this mechanism is the continuous transmission of a transmission chain driven, which will inevitably produce discontinuous phenomena when feeding the pot seedling twice. It will result in the failure of the feeding time, the absence of pot seedling in planting and reduce transplanting quality.